I'll just go ahead and say it: I've always been a procrastinator. I've never been sure why. It's also easy for me to see that I have high standards and overachiever tendencies, which seems to make the procrastination thing make no sense. Why would a person who wants to do something well put it off until the last moment?
An article in the Cal Poly study skills library points out a lot of contributing factors. Procrastinators are often optimistics, underestimating the time it will take to do a task (and then having to rush at the end to finish). Procrastinators are often very self-critical, and subconsciously fear that they'll screw up the project. We have a misguided impression that we work best under pressure (indeed, we do work under pressure, and it might work out fine, but we've never given ourselves a chance to see how good we could be without that pressure). And we're scurrying around doing smaller things because it seems like we never have enough time to do the big task (again, we've never given ourselves the chance to break the big task up into segments and do them bit by bit).
Can you hear the killer chatter in your mind that convinces you to put something off?
---- "I should...(do the best, get an A, be absolutely sure)..."
---- "I can't... (understand, fit it in, find the time)..."
---- "I don't... (have the time, want to do a bad job, want to do it at all)..."
Can you replace it with the opposite?
---- "I want... (to get started, to do a little, to feel good)..."
---- "I can.... (do this, break it into chunks, set limits)..."
---- "I do..... (understand, like my work, know i can do it)..."
http://sas.calpoly.edu/asc/ssl/procrastination.html
A fascinating 2003 Psychology Today article titled "Procrastination: Ten Things to Know" described the ways procrastination hinders our lives:
--we are late, we miss out on opportunities, we have to compromise
--it represents a problem in self-regulation
--it is a way of lying to ourselves
--it's often a form of rebellion
--we are made, not born
--we look for distractions
--the constant stress hurts our immune systems
--we can change!
here's the article:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20030823-000001.html